EdTech 543 - Social Network Learning - Social Media in Learning

The use of teaching and learning strategies are changing exponentially as we move further along into the 21st Century. As teachers we must embrace the change and use new technologies that will help students learn. Only a few short months ago, I was against social media in the classroom as I felt there were too many distractions that could affect student learning. EdTech 543 - Social Network Learning has shown me how wrong I was.

Social media offers so much in terms of collaboration, content knowledge and student engagement. Students learn much differently than only a few short years ago. Student PLNs consist of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and many other social networks. In fact, it seems the newer the platform, the more engagement to learning there is.

This artifact required us to research projects that are correlated to our subject area and are used in the classroom. Each of the projects needed to use social media as an important part of the learning of the students. My topic area was Social Media in Career and Technology Studies. Here is link to my Scoopit curation. Although there were hundreds of articles giving suggestions and ideas on how to integrate social media into a project, I had trouble finding actual online projects that were used in this type of learning. In fact, I did not find many that were better than the lesson I created for EdTech 541 - Integrating Technology into the Classroom. I used this as one of the elements of my curation as it used social media directly in the design of the lesson.

After many hours of research, I realized that many projects, although not directly related to my subject area, could be used in a variety of curricular areas so I chose examples that I could adapt for my classroom. I found social media can be used for a variety of learning outcomes in the classroom. These include collaboration of student to student and student to teacher, the celebration of student work, the creation of student learning networks and the engagement of students in the classroom.

Social media is here to stay and it is time to get rid of the “walled gardens” surrounding the use of this technology. It is vital to engage our students in anyway possible to create learning. It is up to our school boards, administrators and teachers to see past the possible negatives associated with this technology and understand the learning that can occur.